Re: .gz ??? what, how?

[robert@rocknet.net.au]

> 
> On Tue, 1 Jul 1997, Peter S Galbraith wrote:
> 
> > > > This is not readable by an editor.  Is there something special about the
> > > > .gz??
> > > 
> <<snip>>
> > (Funny how an non-Debian specific question still generates so many
> > responses on this list!)
> 
> Not really. What we have here is a real problem for the newbies.

Sure

> 
> To access the documentation you really need to be able to access
> the documentation. Then you can determine what is (and isn't) a Debian
> specific issue. Having a system which can hold the newbies' hand till
> they can walk for themselves has probably never been a design goal for
> Debian, but I think that the user base is growing at such a rate that
> it could be time...
     ^^^^^ Should ... actually if you want to attract msdog ppl, a  "must"!
> 
> Perhaps there should be a quick intro to gzip, zless and zcat in the
> opening scripts (just after the first dselect run?).

Perhaps just a /usr/doc/intro/* section that may actually contain
this and other useful newbie tips

Ok, so let's take a previous response: use 'most' ...

$ most some_text_file.gz 

... fine

$ most some_archive.tar.gz 

... _not_ yet configured to display the 'listing' ... instead it gives
the 'contents' ... not very useful

Ok ... having used slip_slop_slackware I can't help comparing the
way 'less' is configured there ... not having even known of 'most'
and noticing how on the deb-1.2 system I manage that 'less' does not
have the same configured functionality as the 'less' on slackware,
I simply copied the configs over ...
 
in /etc/profile  3  things:

(1)

LESS="-M -I"

... and the switches mean ....

     -i   Causes searches to ignore case; that is, uppercase  and
          lowercase  are  considered  identical.   This option is
          ignored if any uppercase letters appear in  the  search
          pattern;  in  other words, if a pattern contains upper-
          case letters, then that search does not ignore case.

     -I   Like -i, but searches ignore case even if  the  pattern
          contains uppercase letters.

     -M   Causes less to prompt even more verbosely than more.

(2)
.... as well as the environment variable for the script that 'less'
uses to "pipe" :

export LESSOPEN="|lesspipe.sh %s"

(3)

export PAGER=less


--------------------

.... Now, that script 'lesspipe.sh'  I could not find on the debian system
at work, so I ripped it from the slackware one at home, which lives in
/usr/bin/lesspipe.sh

..... And the script is :

----------------- cut here ---------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
# This is a preprocessor for 'less'.  It is used when this environment
# variable is set:   LESSOPEN="|lesspipe.sh %s"

lesspipe() {
  case "$1" in

  *.tar) tar tvvf $1 2>/dev/null ;; # View contents of .tar and .tgz files
  *.tgz) tar tzvvf $1 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.tar.gz) tar tzvvf $1 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.tar.Z) tar tzvvf $1 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.tar.z) tar tzvvf $1 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.Z) gzip -dc $1  2>/dev/null ;; # View compressed files correctly
  *.z) gzip -dc $1  2>/dev/null ;;
  *.gz) gzip -dc $1  2>/dev/null ;;
  *.zip) unzip -l $1 2>/dev/null ;;
  *.1|*.2|*.3|*.4|*.5|*.6|*.7|*.8|*.9|*.n|*.man) FILE=`file -L $1` ; # groff src
    FILE=`echo $FILE | cut -d ' ' -f 2`
    if [ "$FILE" = "troff" ]; then
      groff -s -p -t -e -Tascii -mandoc $1
    fi ;;
#  *) FILE=`file -L $1` ; # Check to see if binary, if so -- view with 'strings'
#    FILE1=`echo $FILE | cut -d ' ' -f 2`
#    FILE2=`echo $FILE | cut -d ' ' -f 3`
#    if [ "$FILE1" = "Linux/i386" -o "$FILE2" = "Linux/i386" \
#         -o "$FILE1" = "ELF" -o "$FILE2" = "ELF" ]; then
#      strings $1
#    fi ;;
  esac
}

lesspipe $1
# eof 
----------------- cut here ---------------------------------------

.... 'less', for me, still does 'more' than 'most' ;)

> 
> John Foster
> 

	Rob -

ps: 1st posting here ... I must say documentation, packaging
and administration in debian appear to be more 'complete' than
in slackware ... unfortunately at this stage I have come
over to work with a rather misconfigured debian system ...
hoping to get good support here ...


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